


I don't cry when I'm sad anymore

by eliopeach



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: BDSM with no aftercare, Bondage, Catharsis, Choking, Fisting, Hitting, Klaus is heartbroken and needs to get hurt, M/M, No Apocalypse, Sex Club, be careful out there, medium violent extremely sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 14:49:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18012929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliopeach/pseuds/eliopeach
Summary: He could have gone anywhere to get sex or pills or alcohol, could have had them all delivered to the house if he thought he could sneak them past his siblings – but there is only one place where he is sure he can get the more... specialist vice consuming his thoughts. He’d been to the club before this, before Dave, but never with such a seriousness of purpose.





	I don't cry when I'm sad anymore

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Left Alone" by Fiona Apple. this is very sad and medium violent (tho completely consensual) – be careful out there.

Klaus goes back to the club when his fantasies about getting beaten up take over his fantasies about fucking completely. Three weeks since he returned to 2019 – three weeks since he held Dave’s heavy, dying body against his chest – and he has started to feel his loneliness as a palpable presence on his body. In some ways it’s the only thing about him that feels physical and solid anymore. But still not physical enough. After three weeks of rattling around the house – including a week in which he speaks to nobody, his mouth dried up and useless – he pulls his matted afghan coat over his bare chest, drags his boots on and goes out into the night.

He could have gone anywhere to get sex or pills or alcohol, could have had them all delivered to the house if he thought he could sneak them past his siblings – but there is only one place where he is sure he can get the more... specialist vice consuming his thoughts. He’d been to the club before this, before Dave, but never with such a seriousness of purpose. Before it was just a more extreme expression of his decadent persona; something in his back pocket for when he needed a plot twist 48 hours into a drugs and fucking bender, a test for that night’s partner in crime. He had lines prepared, suggestions memorised – he  _ never _ went into the back room, sticking to the corny velvet-laden front section where he could hold court like a regular. It was about showing off then, peacocking his freewheeling sexuality. This time he slips into the club by the side entrance. He slams the lock with his fist and it bleeds.

He approaches one of the woman that he doesn’t recognise, speaks to her in a half-formed sentence, the absurdity of trying to be businesslike with one’s deepest and most embarrassing needs. She writes his name on a notepad and points him to a beige plastic chair in the corner where he sits with a bowed head and waits his turn. He had always found it easier to come when he was being held down or choked or stepped on, but he isn’t even sure if this is about sex anymore. All his touch-starved yearning and his heartbreak and his loneliness has swirled together like a grey marbled mass. He feels like an animal, or a ghost: a one-track mind, all desires converging. 

Klaus supposes it would have made for a more romantic story if Dave were the one to break him out of his need to live out sex and punishment at the same time; if instead of hedonistic fucking they made love tenderly, like unimaginative straight people. If anything Dave had encouraged his most primitive desires. Before Dave, his partnerships (if they could be called that) had been strictly no-questions-asked, but Dave  _ asked _ , and Klaus told him, for the first time. Klaus worked it out as he spoke, and Dave helped him comb out the knots of shame. They had been happy –  _ he _ had been happy – perhaps for the first time in his life. But that happiness was on borrowed time.

The woman with the notepad calls his name – he told her it was Ben, a flippant joke that just feels sad when he hears it spoken aloud – and he follows her down a short corridor, illuminated with strip lights covered in faded red gels. At the end, she holds a door open for him without crossing the threshold. The door closes abruptly, muffling the sound of her retreating footsteps. A man in the corner – attractive, Klaus supposes, though he could look like anyone – gestures him towards a makeshift cot in the middle of the room. No names are exchanged. 

The front room of the club is all sleek leather and silver chains, more about aesthetic signifiers than action. In here the ropes secured to the cot are rudimentary but strong; the gags on the table next to it plain and practical. The man instructs Klaus to undress and he does so without looking over. He remembers the first time he undressed for Dave, how he was interrupted halfway through by Dave’s hands over his: “let me take care of this.” A phantom touch. The memory stings. Perhaps he wanted it to. He lays on his back on the bed.

This had all been agreed beforehand, so he knows what is coming. First his hands are secured, bound in a cross across his chest then wrapped three times, secured to the frame of the cot. The gag is wrapped tightly and knotted at the nape of his neck, pulling sharply on his curls. He thinks he feels the ghostly presence of tears; a suggestion.  _ I just want some of my options taken away _ . Words from a lifetime ago.

His legs are folded in half. The first slap coincides with the first two fingers inside him. The man makes no concession to his pleasure, which he had asked for. The fucking parts of this are rudimentary. He just wants to feel full, like concrete being poured into a void. The slaps continue until the man reaches four fingers, then his palm comes crushing down, flattening Klaus’ cheek against the hard mattress. His fingers rut sharply inside Klaus, but he is held down so hard he barely moves. Then his chin being pulled upwards, then the man taking off his belt, then the belt around his neck, then even tighter, and Klaus remembers Dave taking his belt off the first night they managed to stay in a motel away from the camp and Klaus asking him even though oh god it’s so stupid, he’s so sorry but wouldn’t he please just, it wasn’t because he wanted to be hurt not like that he just wanted to give his options to Dave his life to Dave and couldn’t he just try it for him, and – five fingers now and Klaus is sobbing, he hasn’t looked at the man yet, then there’s nothing, he swears it goes black, or maybe he’s just gotten lucky and he won’t ever have to go back to that house again, that house where he’s alone every fucking night and he won’t have to  _ think _ anymore, maybe it’s over – but then he comes to, and suddenly it’s all too real: the cheap imitation leather around his neck and the fist inside him and his useless limbs. He looks at the man and nods, and he’s understood. The punches come like a rainstorm, cleaning him from the outside in, and everything is clear: he closes his eyes and sees Dave’s hand close over his in the motel room and his mind flattens and he comes, barely pleasurable, just a full stop. 

He collapses against the brick wall outside afterwards. There’s real rain now, and he pulls the afghan around him. He was offered the aftercare option but laughed it off, a little punishment for later on. He doesn’t want arms around him, or soothing cloths at his wrecked throat, or kind words – which means, he’s desperate for them, more intensely perhaps than his need for the rest of it. Before he goes back to the house he allows himself a final torture: he closes his eyes and sees Dave cocooned behind him on the motel bed, their arms folded and wrapped together, a kiss on his forehead and a conversation that – with all the will he can summon - he can’t remember a word of.


End file.
